Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,242 granted May 4, 1993 to Daghe et al., the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference, discloses an angled dual check valve construction. The check valve is to prevent back flow of fluid along a flow path and includes a check valve construction having an outlet flow which is discharged at a right angle with respect to the direction of an inlet flow. As disclosed therein, it is generally known to employ redundant valves including an inlet valve member and an outlet valve member to achieve a high degree of reliability in the check valve construction. Prior to the invention of the '242 patent, the valve members were arranged “in-line” in a housing such that the valve members were movable along a common axis to alternatively open and close the check valve. To avoid an overly large or long housing, and the associated inherent excess weight and cost, as well as the suitability for use in applications having restrictive envelope requirements, the '242 construction was invented and has been quite successful for its intended purpose. At the same time, assembling and/or servicing the inlet check valve in that construction occasionally can be difficult because of the possibility of disassociation of the components of the inlet check valve, one from the other. Such disassociation of the components typically can result during installation or removal of the inlet check valve components from the valve housing due to the bias of the spring employed in the inlet check valve.
Furthermore, support for the poppet employed in the inlet check on its guide is over a relatively small bearing area which can result in a tendency of components canting in relation to one another with the resultant lowering of efficiency in terms of an increased flow loss.
In addition, it would be desirable to more accurately affix the location of an insert sleeve and a valve mounting element with relation to one another and within the body.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.